by Richard Wake
Gregory pointed at his last two customers, besides me. "You know them?"
"No. Tell me."
"The guy on the left owns the coin collecting shop on Kruggasse. The other guy owns the stamp collecting shop across the way. You know how narrow that street is -- if you're sitting on the toilet in one of the apartments upstairs, the guy across the way can read your book along with you. So these two guys stare at each other all day with pretty much nothing to do but dust their inventory. I bet they don't have five customers a week. But look at them, happy, laughing. But how can they be happy? It's so fucking dead here."
And then, Gregory delivered the line the same way he always did when this was his mood:
"It's true that I always figured I would die here. But I didn't think I would be dead when I was still living."
This was not a conversation that Gregory ever had with Henry, and it was understood that I was not to share it. Fathers and sons have tricky relationships when things are simple and, well, let's just say that having a father who was a mobster was not simple for Henry. Gregory was not Al Capone or anything like that. He had no involvement in drugs, and he did not want his guys doing anything permanently disabling to someone who got behind on his payments. He did not even want his guys allowing their customers to get too far underwater. His theory was, "What good is this guy to me if he loses all of his money and his family? I want regular, happy, return customers -- no broken legs, no busted marriages."
But Gregory did carry a gun, and he had used it in his younger days. He taught Henry to shoot and wanted him to carry, too. But Henry could barely rough up a guy who was behind on his payments -- he punched a guy in the face once, and it made him physically sick -- and at a certain point, he told his father that the only part of the business he would consider working in was the restaurant. Gregory told me once that he respected Henry for standing up to him, but that's something else the father never told the son. So when he was younger and drinking more, Henry would often come to this conclusion: "He just thinks I'm a pussy."
But that was in Vienna. Now Henry had Liesl, and now his father wasn't a mobster anymore. Zurich was simple for Henry. Zurich was happy for Henry. But for Gregory, oddly, the only time he seemed happy was when he was talking about the thing he hated most -- Hitler.
"You hear the radio today? The Poles are barely hanging on. Poor bastards."
"I know," I said. "Brave and doomed is a tough two-step."
"You know, I knew it from the minute they went in the Rhineland."
"I remember."
"It was so fucking obvious -- first Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland. Anybody who could read a map could see it. At least the Poles are fighting back."
"Brave and doomed," I said.
"Better than laying back and throwing their skirts up," Gregory said. "Austria never had a chance. But if your people had fought, Hitler might have backed down."
This was true. It was at least part of the information I brought back from my trips to Germany as a courier, that the German army was more of a figment of Goebbels' newsreels than anything. But that was about a year and a half earlier, a long time in Krupp years.
"It's too late now," Gregory said. "You know they're much stronger now. It's only a matter of time."
"What is?"
"He's coming this way. He'll finish off the Poles, take a little rest to digest, belch once, and head in our direction."
"To Switzerland?"
"No," Gregory said. "France."
"What about France?" It was Liesl's voice. She was hovering over the table after her night out. At her side was a friend. It was Manon Friere, whose top button was still unbuttoned.
I stood. "Miss Friere, twice in one day. The gods must be telling us something."
"Only that Zurich is a small town," she said.
"Still, what are the odds?"
"I'm sure a statistician would come up with a calculation that would leave you quite disappointed."
If this was flirting, it was a bit on the chilly side of normal. Seeing as how there wasn't really room for four in the booth -- there wasn't really room for three, to be truthful -- Gregory got up to get the women a drink and then joined the stamp guy and the coin guy. As it turned out, Manon had been at a banking reception at lunch and a booksellers' reception at 5, where Liesl and the librarians had gone for a couple of free cocktails before their dinner. They were introduced to Manon there and brought her along.
The conversation over the drink was entirely forgettable. I said a couple of witty things, for I was nothing if not a witty motherfucker, but Manon barely cracked a smile. Oh, well. But as Manon stood and began sliding into her coat, Liesl kicked me under the table, then stared at me and offered a quick flick of her eyes in Manon's direction. I had not sensed an ounce of interest on her part, but Liesl was watching the whole thing with a woman's eyes. What the hell.
So I said, "Dinner sometime? I'll show you that it's a bigger city than you think."
Manon leaned over, grabbed my pen from the table and scrawled her phone number on one of my folders. That was it. Liesl grabbed her arm and walked her to the door, the two of them giggling the whole way.
6
The tram ride to Uetliberg started in the Bahnhof and lasted about 20 minutes, give or take. I wore an overcoat, knowing how cold it could be at the top. In the wintertime, even when there was no snow in Zurich, there would invariably be a few inches on the ground surrounding the tracks as you pulled into the station. In mid-October, with the temperature forecast for the high 40's downtown, it would be 30-something on the mountain.
I didn't know who I was meeting. The return postcard from the Smedley Bookshop in London had been succinct:
Sir,
We have located a copy of "Northanger Abbey," as per your request. We will put it in the mail on the 2nd. Please remit 1 pound, 15 schillings upon receipt. As a favor to us, if you could include a picture postcard of Uetliberg along with your remittance, it would be most appreciated. I told my grandson about your beautiful city mountain, and he is desperate to add the picture to his collection.
Cheers,
Giles Hadley
So, 1:15 p.m. on October 2nd at Uetliberg. Unless he meant 1:15 a.m., but that seemed unlikely -- there were no trains out there in the middle of the night, and no lights besides. Daytime would be much less conspicuous than nighttime. It had to be 1:15 p.m. And if it weren't, well, whoever it was would have been stood up, figured out my confusion, and come back again in the afternoon.
There were a handful of people on the tram -- an old couple, a single old man, a mother attempting to corral a pair of 4-year-old boys, and another woman with a pram. It would have been different on a summer weekend when the trams were packed, and the whole menagerie would alight, mostly families, most with small children, many with prams that required a complex geometric negotiation with the doorway of the tram.
The path off to the left was paved, and it was about a 15-minute walk straight up the hill if you were alone and persistent, a bit longer if you were involved in a leisurely conversation with a companion, a bit longer than that if you were wrangling two small children who were alternately racing ahead or complaining that they needed to be carried.
In winter, the macadam would be covered by layers of ice and then a thin carpet of packed, dirty snow, all of it topped by a healthy dressing of rough gravel. It was the gravel that prevented most pratfalls. But in the summer and early fall, before wet leaves turned the path into a slalom, the walk was nice and comfortable and smooth. The forests along the sides had been thinned recently by workers, the felled trees hewn to precise lengths and stacked immaculately along the route. This was Switzerland, after all.
At the top, especially in the summer, the reward was an unparalleled view of Zurich and its environs -- the river, the lake, the rooftops looking down as if seated in an amphitheater. The view and the gentleman selling cold drinks and wurst from a grill were the reasons to go on an October afternoon. U
nfortunately, on this day, the view was largely obscured by low cloud, and the gentleman had not fired up the grill and had only hot chocolate on offer, and it wasn't even that hot.
I sipped it, though, and waited. I had taken a place on the far side of the viewing area, a couple of hundred feet away from the public binocular things that the kids were all climbing on and attempting to see the roofs of their houses. After about 10 minutes, I began calculating how long I had to wait before abandoning the meeting. A minute or so after that, Groucho arrived. I didn't know his real name, but he had been my Czech intelligence contact when I was recruited in Vienna in early 1937.
"Wait a minute," I said, pointing. The mustache was gone. "What happened? What will I be calling you now."
"You can call me 'Sir,' asshole."
He laughed. We had an odd relationship -- although, to be fair, I didn't know what a healthy relationship between a spy and his handler was supposed to look like. Groucho had recruited me by arguing that, given the stakes, only a coward would refuse. It worked, but it left us in an odd spot. He needed me, and I knew it, and he knew it, yet he spent most of his time giving me shit. The shared experience, though, had worn off some of the roughest edges.
"I thought you were getting out of the business," I said. In his real life, Groucho had been some kind of banker or financial guy in Vienna.
"They kept me in Vienna for a while, but it's not like there was a lot of covert information to be gleaned. Hell, they fucking bragged about how badly they were treating the Jews -- the put it in the newsreels, for Christ's sake. I was wasting my time. I was back in Czechoslovakia in a couple of months, right after you left. I became a full-time intelligence officer, and we all left for London after they fucked us at Munich."
"How's London?"
"Let me put it this way: everything they say about the food and the dentistry is true."
"But at least the Gestapo isn't in your pockets," I said.
"Well, there is that."
Groucho already knew about Michael Landers getting shot, which I expected. In the couple of weeks since it had happened, things had settled down. There was a big splash in the newspapers on the day after the murder, and then the story was on the bottom of the front pages the second day, and then on an inside page the third day, and then gone by the fourth. Nothing at the bank changed. Marta asked me if I was going to the funeral, and I made up something about it being a private service. She never asked again. And, most importantly, Ruchti had never returned with any additional questions.
Still, I was worried. I told my story to Groucho and asked what he thought.
"I can see you're concerned, and I am, too," he said. "It's a complication we were hoping to avoid. We can deal with it, but it is a complication. But there's something else I want to talk to you about."
This "something else" had been my fear since I had first agreed to the whole me-running-the-bank scheme, that they were going to want more. And I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to spy for them again. Babysitting the bank was one thing. Actively spying was something else. They had screwed me the last time, and I wasn't going to get screwed again. They used me as bait in a scheme to frame a Gestapo officer who had uncovered their prized informant, and only through sheer luck did I survive. They swore it wasn't luck, that they always had my fate under their control, but I was convinced they were lying. The cynical bastards had used me, and I wasn't going to be used again.
I had all of that bottled up in me, and when Groucho said, "We want you to get back in the game," I exploded with a "FUCK NO!" that was loud enough to startle a couple of the kids running around nearby.
"Calm the fuck down," Groucho said.
"I'm not fucking doing it."
"Just hear me out."
"Fuck you. This wasn't part of the deal."
"First of all, I didn't make the deal," he said. "Second of all, if you've read a newspaper lately, things have changed a little bit in the last month or so. Things are getting serious."
"Getting serious?" I said. "Getting? First, he swallowed the country where you and I lived, then he swallowed the country where you and I were born, and only now you think it's getting serious?"
"Look. When Hitler made the deal with the Russians, everything changed. You can admit that to yourself or not, but it's the truth. And once they get done squeezing the life out of Poland, Germany from the west, Russia from the east, well, you know."
"No, I don't know," I said, lying.
"Yes, you do. While Stalin guards his ass, Hitler is coming this way. And I love my country as much as you do, but this has become way bigger than Austria or Czechoslovakia. If we're going to have any chance to stop him, it's when he goes into France. And on-the-ground intelligence could make the difference."
"Fuck you. I'm not doing it. I might just quit the bank and get the hell out of here. You can't stop me."
I stopped talking. He stopped talking. We both looked out into the distance, the view obscured by the low cloud.
"Can't see shit," Groucho said. "Kind of a metaphor."
We talked some more, quieter now. I agreed not to quit the bank. Groucho said he would be in town for a bit and would be in contact again if necessary. I left first. What was a 15-minute walk on the way up the hill took less than half of that on the way down.
7
"When's the date?" Liesl said.
"Date? With who?" Henry said.
"Is it the French one from the other night?" Gregory said.
And so went the ritual dissection of my love life. We were in the cafe, near closing time. Henry and Liesl had come down from the apartment for their nightly drink. Gregory was tidying up or appearing as if he were tidying up, mostly for Henry's benefit. Two of the fossils shared a table up front by the door. It was just a Wednesday night in October.
Manon and I had both been busy -- she had traveled to Lausanne to a convention of fabric manufacturers or some such thing -- but we were going to have dinner Friday night. It would be my first actual date in nearly six months. I really had no expectations, even as Liesl was talking her up to Henry and Gregory and making it seem as if I had a shot, and that it would be my fault if it didn't work out. The two times I had met Manon, it just had not felt right. But, well, whatever -- it clearly beat the alternative.
As I sat there, trying to change the subject, the door opened. I didn't hear it as much as feel it, because it was a chilly and windy night, and wind could sometimes chase up Oberdorfstrasse from the Grossmunster and fill the narrow, cobbled street, almost creating heightened pressure that would burst through a release point, such as an open door. I felt the cold and looked up and saw a man wearing a dark overcoat and hat and carrying a portfolio. He looked around and then fixed on our little group and headed toward us.
His face brightened as he approached, and brightened was followed by grinning when he arrived. He opened the portfolio pulled out a pen and began pointing at us as he spoke.
"I think this is my lucky day. You are Gregory. You are Liesl. You are Henry and Alex, in some order. I think I have hit the jackpot."
That the man was presumptuous went without saying. That he was unlikeable besides also was plain -- hair slicked down, suit just so, perfectly knotted necktie, a well-kept weasel. It took a second for us to digest the fact that he knew who we were and that he had yet to introduce himself.
"And who would you be, exactly?" Gregory said, finally. "And what are you doing with our names in your goddamn leather notebook?"
With that, the grin was gone, replaced not by anger but by a kind of hurt puppy kind of look. He was getting more unlikeable by the second. He said his name was Ernst Meissner, and that he was some kind of junior assistant bullshit attache stationed at the German legation in Zurich.
He positioned the portfolio under his arm and held his hands up, as if in surrender. "I am nothing more than the humble census taker. As a service to our citizens, we attempt to keep track of all expatriates from the Reich and to offer them contact infor
mation and social opportunities with their brethren."
"None of us are German so you can go," Liesl said. Her rudeness was more than a little sexy.
"You hold a Czech passport, according to my records. So do Alex and Henry. Gregory holds an Austrian passport. That makes all of you citizens of the Reich."
"But we're not Germans." Gregory this time, angrier. "And what right do you have to come into my place of business and--"
Meissner held up his hand, stopping the rant.
"I am sorry you are upset. Let me assure you that there is nothing nefarious about this cataloging of our citizens. Each of our legations in Switzerland has an office in charge of just such record-keeping. That is all it is -- paperwork designed to benefit you and our other citizens living abroad. In Switzerland alone, we have located thousands just like you -- tens of thousands. We keep their contact information on file. If there is ever a need to speak to someone, because of some kind of emergency back home, God forbid, or maybe to offer a business contact or a social opportunity, we have the means to get in touch. That's all this is."
Of course, anyone who knew the Germans knew that nothing was quite that innocent. I had no doubt that they were organizing little Nazi hit squads, in case the Wehrmacht ever came calling on the Swiss border and needed a little help with their entrance. I also had no doubt that the names in Meissner's portfolio, and in other portfolios around the country, were encouraged to keep their eyes and ears open and report any interesting morsels of rumor or gossip to the legation. You know, just like back home. Because while you couldn't openly wear the swastika or go all pro-Nazi in this country, there was no way they could tell what was written on your heart.
The fact that the four of us had so clearly identified ourselves as non-cooperators was also to Meissner's benefit. If the Germans ever did invade, grabbing all of the gold and the chocolate, they would already have a list of potential enemies. Which, I guess, was why Meissner uncapped his pen, ticked a couple of boxes on his paperwork, and clapped shut his portfolio. Then he stopped for a second, re-opened it, and removed a sheet of paper that he left on the table.
